Poetical Works

Charles Churchill

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Title: Poetical Works

Author: Charles Churchill

Release Date: July, 2005 [EBook #8592] [Yes, we are more than one year ahead of schedule] [This file was first posted on July 25, 2003] Edition: 10 Language: English

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THE POETICAL WORKS OF CHARLES CHURCHILL.

With Memoir, Critical Dissertation, and Explanatory Notes,

By The REV. GEORGE GILFILLAN. * * * * *

CHURCHILL—HIS LIFEAND WRITINGS.

In Churchill we find a signal specimen of a considerable class of writers, concerning whom Goldsmith's words are true—

 "Who, born for the universe, narrow'd their mind,  And to party gave up what was meant for mankind."

Possessed of powers and natural endowments which might have made him, under favourable circumstances, a poet, a hero, a man, and a saint, he became, partly through his own fault, and partly through the force of destiny, a satirist, an unfortunate politician, a profligate, died early; and we must approach his corpse, as men do those of Burns and Byron, with sorrow, wonder, admiration, and blame, blended into one strange, complex, and yet not unnatural emotion. Like them, his life was short and unhappy—his career triumphant, yet checquered—his powers uncultivated—his passions unchecked—his poetry only a partial discovery of his genius—his end sudden and melancholy—and his reputation, and future place in the history of letters, hitherto somewhat uncertain. And yet, like them, his very faults and errors, both as a man and a poet, have acted, with many, as nails, fastening to a "sure place" his reputation and the effect of his genius.

Charles Churchill was born in Vine Street, Westminster, in February 1731. He was the eldest son of the Rev. Charles Churchill, a rector in Essex, as well as a curate, and lecturer of St John the Evangelist, Westminster. As to the attainments of the poet's father, we know only that he was qualified to superintend the studies of the son, during the intervals of public tuition. At eight years of age, he was sent to Westminster School, and placed under the care of Dr Nichols and Dr Pierson Lloyd, where his proficiency in classical lore was by no means remarkable; nor did he give any promise of the brilliance which afterwards distinguished his genius. At fifteen, he stood as candidate for admission to the foundation at Westminster, and carried it triumphantly. Shortly after, having by some misdemeanour displeased the masters, he was compelled to compose, and recite in the school-room, a poetical declamation in Latin, by way of penance. This he accomplished in a masterly manner—to the astonishment of his masters, and the delight of his school- fellows—some of whom became afterwards distinguished men. We can fancy the scene at the day of the recitation—the grave and big-wigged schoolmasters looking grimly on—their aspect, however, becoming softer and brighter, as one large hexameter rolls out after another—the strong, awkward, ugly boy, unblushingly pouring forth his energetic lines— cheered by the sight of the relaxing gravity of his teachers' looks—while around, you see the bashful tremulous figure of poor Cowper, the small thin shape and bright eye of Warren Hastings, and the waggish countenance of Colman—all eagerly watching the reciter—and all, at last, distended and brightened with joy at his signal triumph.

At the age of eighteen, he stood for a fellowship in Merton College, but without success—being defeated by older candidates. Shortly after, he applied for matriculation at the University of Oxford, but is SAID to have been rejected at his examination, in which, instead of answering the questions proposed, he broke out into satirical reflections on the abilities of his judges. From Oxford he repaired to Cambridge, where he was admitted into Trinity College. Here, however, his stay was very short,—he was probably repelled by thechevaux-de-friseof the mathematics;—and in a few weeks he returned to London, disgusted at both universities, shaking their dust off his feet, and, perhaps, vowing vengeance against them—a vow which he has kept in his poetry. In his "Ghost," for instance, he thus ridiculed those forms of admission—

 "Which Balaam's ass  As well as Balaam's self might pass,  And with his master take degrees,  Could he contrive to pay the fees."

Penniless, and soured by disappointment, Churchill returned to his father's house; and, being idle, soon obtained work from the proverbial "taskmaster" of all idle people. Having become acquainted with a young lady, named Scott, whose father lived in the vicinity of Westminster School, he, with true poetic imprudence, married her privately in the Fleet, to the great annoyance of both their parents. His father, however, was much attached to and proud of his son, and at last was reconciled to the match, and took the young couple home. Churchill passed one quiet domestic year under the paternal roof. At its termination—for reasons which are not known—he retired to Sunderland, in the north of England, and seems there to have applied himself enthusiastically to the study of poetry—commencing, at the same time, a course of theological reading, with a view to the Church. He remained in Sunderland till the year 1753, when he came back to London to take possession of a small fortune which accrued to him through his wife. He had now reached the age of twenty-two, and had been three years married.

During the residence in the metropolis which succeeded, he frequented the theatres, and came thus in contact with a field where he was to gather his earliest and most untarnished laurels. In "The Rosciad," we find the results of several years' keen and close observation of the actors of the period, collected into one focus, and pointed and irradiated by the

power of genius. As Scott, while carelessly galloping in his youth through Liddesdale, and listening to ballads and old- world stories, was "making himself" into the mighty minstrel of the border—so this big, clumsy, overgrown student, seated in the pit of Drury Lane, or exalted to the one-shilling gallery of Covent Garden, was silently growing into the greatest poet of the stage that, perhaps, ever lived.

Soon after, he was ordained deacon by the Bishop of Bath and Wells, on the curacy of Cadbury, in Somersetshire, where he immediately removed, and entered on a career of active ministerial work. Such were the golden opinions he gained in Cadbury, that, in 1756, although he had taken no degree, nor could be said to have studied at either of the universities, he was ordained priest by Dr Sherlock, the Bishop of London (celebrated for his Sermons and his "Trial of the Witnesses"), on his father's curacy of Rainham, Essex. Here he continued diligent in his pastoral duties—blameless in his conduct, and attentive to his theological studies. He seemed to have entirely escaped from the suction of the stage —to have forsworn the Muses, and to have turned the eye of his ambition away from the peaks of Parnassus to the summit of the Bishops' Bench.

But for Churchill's poor circumstances, it is likely that he would have reached this elevation, as surely as did his great contemporary, and the object of his implacable hatred and abuse, William Warburton. But his early marriage, and his increasing responsibilities, produced pecuniary embarrassments, and these must have tended gradually to sour him against his profession, and to prepare his mind for that rupture with it which ultimately ensued. To support himself and his family, he opened a school, and met with considerable encouragement—although we suspect that his scholars felt something of the spirit of the future satirist stirring in the motions of his rod, and that he who afterwards lashed his century did not spare his school. In the year 1758, his amiable and excellent father died, and (a striking testimony both to his own and his son's early worth) Charles was unanimously chosen to be his father's successor in the curacy and lectureship of St John's. There he laboured for a time, according to some statements, with much punctuality, energy, and acceptance. After "The Rosciad" had established his name, he sold ten of the sermons he had preached in St John's to a bookseller for £250. We have not read them; but Dr Kippis has pronounced them utterly unworthy of their author's fame—without a single gleam of his poetic fire—so poor, indeed, that he supposes that they were borrowed from some dull elderly divine, if not from Churchill's own father. This reminds us of a story which was lately communicated to us about the famous William Godwin. He, too, succeeded his father in his pastoral charge. Tinged, however, already with heterodox views, he was by no means so popular as his father had been. His own sermons were exceedingly cold and dry, but he possessed a chestful of his father's, and used to read them frequently, by way of grateful change to his hearers. The sermons of the elder Godwin were recognised by the orthodoxy of their sentiment, and the dinginess of their colour, and were much relished; and so long as the stock lasted, the future author of "Caleb Williams" commanded a tolerable audience; but so soon as he had read them all, and resumed his own lucubrations, his hearers melted away, and he moved off to become a literateur in London. Perhaps Churchill, in like manner, may have found that general audiences like plain sense better than poetry. That he had ever much real piety or zeal has been gravely doubted, and we share in the doubts. But although he himself speaks slightingly, in one of his latter poems, of his ministerial labours, he at least played his part with outward decorum. His great objection to the office was still his small salary, which amounted to scarcely £100 per annum. This compelled him to resume the occupation of a tutor, first to the young ladies attending a boarding-school in Queen Square, Bloomsbury, and then to several young gentlemen who were prosecuting the study of the classics.

When about twenty-seven years of age, he renewed his acquaintance with Robert Lloyd, the son of Dr Lloyd, one of the masters of Westminster School, and who had been an early chum of Churchill's. This young man had discovered very promising abilities, alike at Westminster and at Cambridge, and had been appointed usher in his father's seminary; but, sick of the drudgery, and infected with a fierce thirst both for fame and pleasure, had flung himself upon the literary arena. Although far inferior to Churchill in genius, and indeed little better than a clever copyist of his manner, he exerted a very pernicious influence on his friend's conduct. He borrowed inspiration from Churchill, and gave him infamy in exchange. The poet could do nothing by halves. Along with Lloyd, he rushed into a wild career of dissipation. He became a nightly frequenter of the theatres, taverns, and worse haunts. His wife, with whom, after the first year, he never seems to have been happy, instead of checking, outran her husband in extravagance and imprudence. He got deeply involved in debt, and was repeatedly in danger of imprisonment, till Dr Lloyd, his friend's father, nobly stept forward to his relief, persuaded his creditors to accept five shillings in the pound, and himself lent what was required to complete the sum. It is said that, when afterwards Churchill had made money by the sale of his poems, he voluntarily paid the whole of the original debt.

Along with the new love of indulgence, there had arisen in his bosom the old love of verse. Stimulated by intercourse with Lloyd, Colman, B. Thornton, and other wits of the period, he had written a poem, in Hudibrastic rhyme, entitled "The Bard." This he offered to one Waller, a bookseller in Fleet Street, who rejected it with scorn. In this feeling Churchill seems afterwards to have shared, as he never would consent to its publication. Not at all discouraged, he sat down and wrote a satire entitled "The Conclave," directed against the Dean and Chapter of Westminster,—Dr Zachary Pearce, a favourite of Churchill's ire, being then Dean. This would have been published but for the fear of legal proceedings. It was extremely personal and severe. His third effort was destined to be more successful. This was "The Rosciad," written, it is said, after two months' close attendance on the theatres. This excessively clever satire he offered to various booksellers, some say for twenty pounds, others for five guineas. It was refused, and he had to print it at his own expense. It appeared, without his name, in March 1761. Churchill now, like Byron, "awoke one morning and found himself famous." A few days convinced him and all men that a decided hit had been made, and that a strong new satirist had burst, like a comet, into the sky—

"With fear of change perplexing" players.

The effect was prodigious. The critics admired—the victims of his satire writhed and raved—the public greedily bought, and all cried out, "Who can this be?" TheCritical Review, then conducted by Smollett, alone opposed the general

opinion. It accused Colman and Lloyd of having concocted "The Rosciad," for the purpose of puffing themselves. This compelled Churchill to quit his mask. He announced his name as the author of the poem, and as preparing another—his "Apology"—addressed to theCritical Reviewers, which accordingly appeared ere the close of April. It proved a second bombshell, cast into the astonished town. Smollett was keenly assailed in it, and had to write to Churchill, through Garrick, that he was not the writer of the obnoxious critique. Garrick, himself the hero of "The Rosciad," was here rather broadly reminded that heroes are mortal, and that kings may be dethroned, and had to make humiliating concessions to the fearless satirist. Fearless, indeed, and strong he required to be, for many of his victims had vowed loud and deep to avenge their quarrel by inflicting corporal chastisement on their foe. He armed himself with a huge bludgeon, however, and stalked abroad and returned home unharmed and unattempted. None cared to meddle with such a brawny Hercules.

In another way his enemies soon had their revenge. He had gained one thousand pounds by his two poems, and this supplied him with the materials of unlimited indulgence, which he did not fail to use. He threw off every restraint. He donned, instead of his clerical costume, a blue coat and gold-laced waistcoat. He separated from his wife, giving her, indeed, a handsome allowance. His midnight potations became deeper and more habitual. Dean Zachary Pearce, afterwards Bishop of Rochester, in vain remonstrated. At last, on his parishioners taking the matter up, and raising an outcry as to his neglect of duty, and the unbecoming character of his dress, he resigned his curacy and lectureship, and became for the rest of his life a literary and dissipated "man about town."

In October 1761 he published a poem entitled "Night," addressed to Lloyd, in which, while seeking to vindicate himself from the charges against hismorale, he in reality glories in his shame. His sudden celebrity had perhaps acted as a glare of light, revealing faults that might have been overlooked in an obscure person. With his dissipation, too, there mingled some elements of generosity and compassion, as in the story told of him by Charles Johnson in his "Chrysal" of the poet succouring a poor starving girl of the town, whom he met in the midnight streets,—an incident reminding one of the similar stories told of Dr Johnson, and Burke, and realising the parable of the good Samaritan. Yet his conduct on the whole could not be defended.

His next poem was "The Ghost," which he published in parts, and continued at intervals. It was a kind of rhymed diary or waste-book, in which he deposited his every-day thoughts and feelings, without any order or plan,—reminding us of "Tristram Shandy" or of "Don Juan," although not so whimsically delightful as the former, nor so brilliant and poignant as the latter.

But now, in 1762, the Poet was to degrade or to sublimate into the Politician, at the bidding of that gay magician, Jack Wilkes. That this man was much better than a clever and pre-eminently lucky scoundrel, is now denied by few. He had, indeed, immensepluckand convivial pleasantry, with considerable learning and talent. But he had no principle, no character, little power of writing, and did not even possess a particle of that mob eloquence which seduces multitudes. His depravities and vices were far too gross even for that gross age. In the very height of his reputation for patriotism, he was intriguing with the ministry for a place for himself. And he became in his latter days, as Burke had predicted (for we strongly suspect that Burke wrote the words in "Junius"), "a silent senator," sate down "infamous and contented,"— proving that it had only been "the tempest which had lifted him from his place."

Wilkes introduced himself to Churchill, and they became speedily intimate. Soon after, indignant at the supremacy of Lord Bute, who, as a royal favourite, had obtained a power in the country which had not been equalled since Buckingham fell before the assassin Felton's knife, and was employing all his influence to patronise the Scotch, Wilkes commenced theNorth Briton. In this, from the first, he was assisted by Churchill, who, however, did not write prose so vigorously as verse. He had sent to theNorth Britona biting paper against the Scotch. On reflection, he recalled and recast it in rhyme. It was "The Prophecy of Famine;" and became so popular as to make a whole nation his enemies, and alltheirenemies his friends. This completely filled up the measure of Churchill's triumph. He actually dressed his youngest son in the Highland garb, took him everywhere along with him, and instructed him to say, when asked why he was thus dressed, "Sir, my father hates the Scotch; and does it to plague them."

Lord Bute resigned early in 1763, and was succeeded by a ministry comprising such men as Sir Francis Dashwood, and Lord Sandwich, who had been intimates of Wilkes, and had shared with him in certain disgusting orgies at Medmenham Abbey. They now, however, changed their tactics, and became vehement upholders of morality and religion; and began to watch their opportunity for pouncing on their quondam associate. This he himself furnished by the famousNorth Briton, No. 45. That paper may now seem, to those who read it, a not very powerful, and not very daring diatribe. But the times were inflammable—the nation was frantic with rage at the peace—the ministry were young, and willing to flesh their new- got power in some victim or other; and Wilkes, in this paper, had now exposed himself to their fury. Warrants were instantly issued to arrest him and Churchill, as well as the publishers and printers. Wilkes was newly arrested when Churchill walked into his room. Knowing that his friend's name was also in the warrant, he adroitly said to Churchill, "Good morrow, Mr Thomson; how is Mrs Thomson to-day; doesshe dine in the country?" The poet took the hint—said that she was waiting on him—took his leave, and retired to the country accordingly.

Immediately after occurred the controversy between Hogarth and our poet. While Wilkes's case was being tried, and Chief-Justice Pratt, afterwards Lord Camden, was about to give the memorable decision in favour of the accused, and in condemnation of general warrants, Hogarth was sitting in the court, and immortalising Wilkes's villanous squint upon the canvas. In July 1763, Churchill avenged his friend's quarrel by the savage personalities of his "Epistle to William Hogarth." Here, while lauding highly the painter's genius, he denounces his vanity, his envy, and makes an unmanly and brutal attack on his supposed dotage. Hogarth, within a month, replied by caricaturing Churchill as a bear with torn clerical bands, paws in ruffles, a pot of porter in his right hand, and a knot of LIES andNorth Britonsin his left. Churchill threatened him with a renewed and severer assault in the shape of an elegy, but was dissuaded from it by his mistress.

This was Miss Carr, daughter of a respectable sculptor in Westminster, whom Churchill had seduced. After a fortnight they were both struck with remorse, agreed to separate, and, through the intercession of a friend, the young lady was restored to her parents. Rendered miserable, however, by the taunts of an elder sister, she, in absolute despair, cast herself again on Churchill's protection, and they remained together till his death. In his letters we find him, during one of his sober intervals, living quietly with her in Richmond. In "The Conference," he makes some allusions to this unhappy affair, and discovers the spirit, if not of true penitence, certainly of keen remorse, and strong self-crimination. In the autumn of 1763 he became the comforter of his friend, Lloyd, in the Fleet, supported him in confinement, and opened a subscription for the discharge of his heavy debts, which, owing to the backwardness of others, proved of little service.

Toward the close of this year, theNorth Britonwas ordered to be burnt by the common hangman; and, on the motion of Lord Sandwich, Wilkes was handed over for prosecution, for his infamous "Essay on Woman," a parody on Pope's "Essay on Man"—(one Kidgell, a clergyman, had stolen a copy, and informed the Government.) Lord Sandwich was backed by Warburton; and the result was, Wilkes's expulsion from the House of Commons, and his flight to France. He had previously fought a duel with one Martin, an M.P., by whom he was severely wounded. All this furnished Churchill with matter for his "Duellist," which even Horace Walpole pronounced "glorious." In this vigorous production, he mercilessly lashes Martin, Kidgell, Warburton, and especially Sandwich. At this time he, too, purposed a retreat to France—a country where his name was already so well known, that when the Honourable Mr Churchill, the son of a general of the name, was asked, in Paris, if he were Churchill, the famous poet, and replied that he was not, the answer of the Frenchman was, "So much the worse for you." His time, however, to visit that coast, destined to be so fatal to him, was not yet quite come.

From Richmond he removed to Acton-Common, where he had a house furnished with great elegance—"kept a post- chaise, saddle-horses, and pointers—and fished, fowled, hunted, coursed, and lived in an easy independent manner." There he continued his irregular but rapid and energetic course of composition, pouring out poem after poem as if he felt his time to be short, or as if he were spurred on by the secret stings of misery and remorse. To "The Duellist" succeeded "The Author,"—a poem more general and less poisoned with personalities than any of his former. "Gotham," by far the most poetical of his works, came next. When Lord Sandwich stood for the High-Stewardship of Cambridge, Churchill's ancient grudge, as well as his itch for satire, revived, and he improvised "The Candidate," a piece of hasty but terrible sarcasm. With breathless and portentous rapidity followed "The Farewell," "The Times," and "Independence," which was his last published production. Two fragments were found among his MSS., one "A Dedication to Warburton," and another, "The Journey," his latest effort, and in which the last line now seems prophetic—

"I on my journey all alone proceed."

A far and final journey was before this great and ill-fated poet. He was seized with one of those sudden longings to see a friend, which are not uncommon with the impulsive. He determined to visit Wilkes at Boulogne, and conveyed his purpose to his brother John in the following note:—"Dear Jack, adieu, C.C." On the 22d of October 1764, he started for France, met Wilkes; but on the 29th was seized with miliary fever, under which, while imprudently removed from his bed to be conveyed at his own desire to England, his constitution sunk, and he expired on the 4th of November, in the thirty- third year of his age. He is said to have died calmly and firmly, rebuking the excessive grief of his friends, and repeating some manly but not very Christian lines from his own poetry. By a will made during his sickness, he left an annuity of sixty pounds to his wife (in addition, we suppose, to her former allowance), fifty pounds a-year to Miss Carr, besides providing for his two boys, and leaving mourning rings to his more intimate friends. Wilkes got the charge of all his works. His body was brought to Dover, where he now sleeps in an old churchyard, which once belonged to the church of St Martin, with a stone over him, bearing his age, the date of his death, and this line from one of his own poems—

"Life to the last enjoy'd, here Churchill lies."

The words which he is reported to have used on his deathbed,shouldhave been inscribed on the stone—

"What a fool I have been!"

Hogarth had expired on the 25th of October, ten days before his opponent. Lloyd was finishing his dinner, when the news of his friend's death arrived. He was seized with sudden sickness, and crying out, "I shall soon follow poor Charles," was carried to a bed, whence he was never to rise. Churchill's favourite sister, Patty, who had been engaged to Lloyd, soon afterwards sank under the double blow. The premature death of this most popular of the poets of the time, excited a great sensation. His furniture and books sold excessively high; a steel pen, for instance, for five pounds, and a pair of plated spurs for sixteen guineas. Wilkes talked much about his "dear Churchill," but, with the exception of burning a MS. fragmentary satire, which Churchill had begun against Colman and Thornton,two of his intimate friends, and erecting an urn to him near his cottage in the Isle of Wight, with a flaming Latin inscription, he did nothing for his memory. The poet's brother, John, an apothecary, survived him only one year; and his two sons, Charles and John, inherited the vices without the genius of their father. There was, as late as 1825, a grand-daughter of his, a Mary Churchill, who had been a governess, surviving as a patient in St George's Hospital,—a characteristic close to such a wayward, unfortunate race.

For the errors of Churchill, as a man, there does not seem to exist any plea of palliation, except what may be found in the poverty of his early circumstances, and in the strength of his later passions. The worst is, that he never seems to have been seduced into sin through the bewildering and bewitching mists of imagination. It was naked sensuality that he appeared to worship, and he always sinned with his eyes open. Yet his moral sense, though blunted, was never obliterated; and many traits of generosity and good feeling mingled with his excesses. Choosing satire as the field of his Muse, was partly the cause and partly the effect of an imperfectmorale. We are far from averring that no satirist can be a

good man, but certainly most satirists have either been very good or very bad men. To the former class have belonged Cowper, Crabbe, &c.; to the latter, such names as Swift, Dryden, Byron, and, we must add, Churchill. Robust manhood, honesty, and hatred of pretence, we admit him to have possessed; but of genuine love to humanity he seems to have been as destitute as of fear of God, or regard for the ordinary moralities.

We have to deal with him, however, principally as a poet; and there can, we think, now be but one opinion as to his peculiar merits. He possessed, beyond all doubt, a strong understanding, a lively imagination, a keen perception of character—especially in its defects and weaknesses—considerable wit without any humour, fierce passions and hatreds, and a boundless command of a loose, careless, but bold and energetic diction; add to this, a constant tone of self-assertion, and rugged independence. He was emphatically a John Bull, sublimated. He rushed into the poetic arena more like a pugilist than a poet, laying about him on all sides, giving and taking strong blows, and approving himself, in the phrase of "the fancy," game to the backbone. His faults, besides those incident to most satirists,—such as undue severity, intrusion into private life, anger darkening into malignity, and spleen fermenting into venom,—were carelessness of style, inequality, and want of condensation. Compared to the satires of Pope, Churchill's are far less polished, and less pointed. Pope stabs with a silver bodkin—Churchill hews down his opponent with a broadsword. Pope whispers a word in his enemy's ear which withers the heart within him, and he sinks lifeless to the ground; Churchill pours out a torrent of blasting invective which at once kills and buries his foe. Dryden was his favourite model; and although he has written no such condensed masterpieces of satire as the characters of Shaftesbury and Buckingham, yet his works as a whole are not much inferior, and justify the idea that had his life been spared, he might have risen to the level of "Glorious John." His versification, too, is decidedly of the Drydenic type. It is a free, fierce, rushing, sometimes staggering, race across meadow, moor, and mountain, dreading nothing except repose and languor, the lines chasing, and sometimes tumbling over each other in their haste, like impatient hounds at a fox-hunt. But more than Dryden, we think, has Churchill displayed the genuine poetic faculty, as well as often a loftier tone of moral indignation. This latter feeling is the inspiration of "The Candidate," and of "The Times," which, although coarse in subject, and coarse in style, burns with a fire of righteous indignation, reminding you of Juvenal. The finest display of his imaginative power is in "Gotham," which is throughout a glorious rhapsody, resembling some of the best prose effusions of Christopher North, and abounding in such lines as these:—

 "The cedar, whose top mates the highest cloud,  Whilst his old father Lebanon grows proud  Of such a child, andhis vast body laid  Out many a mile, enjoys the filial shade."

It is of "Gotham" that Cowper says that few writers have equalled it for its "bold and daring strokes of fancy; its numbers so hazardously ventured upon, and so happily finished; its matter so compressed, and yet so clear; its colouring so sparingly laid on, and yet with such a beautiful effect."

One great objection to Churchill's poetry lies in the temporary interest of the subjects to which most of it is devoted. The same objection, however, applies to the letters of Junius, and to the speeches and papers of Burke; and the same answer to it will avail for all. Junius, by the charm of his style, by his classic severities, and purged, poignant venom, contrives to interest us in the paltry political feuds of the past. Burke's does the same, by the general principles he extracts from, and by the poetry with which he gilds, the rubbish. And so does Churchill, by the weighty sense, the vigorous versification, the inextinguishable spirit, and the trenchant satire and invective of his song. The wretched intrigues of Newcastle and Bute, the squabbles of the aldermen and councillors of the day, the petty quarrels of petty patriots among themselves, and the poverty, spites, and frailties of forgotten players, are all shown as in a magnifying- glass, and shine upon us transfigured in the light of the poet's genius.

We have not room for lengthened criticism on all his separate productions. "The Rosciad" is the most finished, pointed, and Pope-like of his satires; it has more memorable and quotable lines than any of the rest. "The Prophecy of Famine" is full of trash; but contains, too, many lines in which political hatred, through its intense fervour, sparkles into poetry: such as —

"No birds except as birds of passage flew;"

the account of the creatures which, when admitted into the ark,

"Their saviour shunn'd, and rankled in the dark;"

and the famous line—

"Where half-starved spiders prey on half-starved flies."

"The Ghost" is the least felicitous of all his poems, although its picture of Pomposo (Dr Johnson) is exceedingly clever. The "Dedication to Warburton" is a strain of terrible irony, but fails to damage the Atlantean Bishop. "The Journey" is not only interesting as his last production, but contains some affecting personal allusions, intermingled with its stinging scorn —like pale passion-flowers blended with nettles and nightshade. The most of the others have been already characterised.

Churchill has had two very formidable enemies to his fame and detractors from his genius—Samuel Johnson and Christopher North. The first pronounced him "a prolific blockhead," "a huge and fertile crab-tree;" the second has wielded the knout against his back with peculiar gusto and emphasis, in a paper on satire and satirists, published inBlackwood

for 1828. Had Churchill been alive, he could have easily "retorted scorn"—set a "Christophero" over against the portrait of "Pomposo:" the result had been, as always in such cases, a drawn battle; and damage would have accrued, not to the special literateurs, but to the general literary character. Prejudice or private pique always lurks at the bottom of such reckless assaults, and all men in the long run feel so. In Johnson's case, thecausa belliwas unquestionably political difference; and in Christopher North's it was the love of Scotland which so warmly glowed in his bosom, and which created a glow of hatred no less warm against Scotland's ablest, fiercest, and most inveterate poetical foe.

Churchill's poetry only requires to be better known to be highly appreciated for its masculine and thoroughly English qualities. In taking our leave of him, we are again haunted by the signal resemblance he bears, both in mental characteristics and in history, to Byron. Both were powerful in satire, and still more so in purely poetic composition. Both were irregular in life, and unfortunate in marriage. Both were distinguished by fitful generosity, and careless tenderness. Both obtained at once, and during all their career maintained, a pre-eminence in popularity over all their contemporaries. Both were severely handled by reviewers, and underrated by rivals. Both assumed an attitude of defiance to the world, and stood ostentatiously at bay. Both mingled largely in the politics of their day, and both took the liberal side. Both felt and expressed keen remorse for their errors, and purposed and in part began reformation. Both died at an untimely age by fever, and in a foreign land. The dust of both, not admitted into Westminster Abbey, nevertheless reposes in their native soil, and attracts daily visitors, who lean, and weep, and wonder over it—partly in sympathy with their fate—partly in pity for their errors—and partly in admiration of their genius. * * * * * NOTE.—We have not alluded to various anecdotes told about Churchill's journey to Wales, about his setting up as a cider merchant, &c., because some of them appear extremely apocryphal. The author of an article on him in the Edinburgh Reviewfor January 1845 asserts that he was rejected from Oxford because he had already been married. But, if so, why was he admitted to Cambridge? Besides, the writer adduces no proof of his assertion. The paper, otherwise, is worthy of its author and of the poet. * * * * *

CONTENTS.

THEROSCIAD THEAPOLOGYNIGHT THEPROPHECYOFFAMINEAN EPISTLETO WILLIAM HOGARTH THEDUELLIST GOTHAM THEAUTHOR THE CONFERENCETHEGHOST THECANDIDATETHEFAREWELL THETIMES INDEPENDENCETHEJOURNEYDEDICATION TO CHURCHILL'S SERMONS LINES WRITTEN IN WINDSOR PARK

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THEROSCIAD.[1]

 Unknowing and unknown, the hardy Muse  Boldly defies all mean and partial views;  With honest freedom plays the critic's part,  And praises, as she censures, from the heart.

Roscius[2] deceased, each high aspiring player Push'd all his interest for the vacant chair. The buskin'd heroes of the mimic stage No longer whine in love, and rant in rage; The monarch quits his throne, and condescends Humbly to court the favour of his friends; For pity's sake tells undeserved mishaps, And, their applause to gain, recounts his claps. Thus the victorious chiefs of ancient Rome, To win the mob, a suppliant's form assume; 10 In pompous strain fight o'er the extinguish'd war, And show where honour bled in every scar.  But though bare merit might in Rome appear The strongest plea for favour, 'tis not here; We form our judgment in another way; And they will best succeed, who best can pay: Those who would gain the votes of British tribes, Must add to force of merit, force of bribes.  What can an actor give? In every age Cash hath been rudely banish'd from the stage; 20 Monarchs themselves, to grief of every player, Appear as often as their image there: They can't, like candidate for other seat, Pour seas of wine, and mountains raise of meat. Wine! they could bribe you with the world as soon, And of 'Roast Beef,' they only know the tune: But what theyhave theygive; could Clive[3]do more,

Though for each million he had brought home four?  Shuter[4] keeps open house at Southwark fair, And hopes the friends of humour will be there; 30 In Smithfield, Yates[5] prepares the rival treat For those who laughter love, instead of meat; Foote,[6] at Old House,—for even Foote will be, In self-conceit, an actor,—bribes with tea; Which Wilkinson[7] at second-hand receives, And at the New, pours water on the leaves.  The town divided, each runs several ways, As passion, humour, interest, party sways. Things of no moment, colour of the hair, Shape of a leg, complexion brown or fair, 40 A dress well chosen, or a patch misplaced, Conciliate favour, or create distaste.  From galleries loud peals of laughter roll, And thunder Shuter's praises; he's so droll. Embox'd, the ladies must have something smart, Palmer! oh! Palmer[8] tops the jaunty part. Seated in pit, the dwarf with aching eyes, Looks up, and vows that Barry's[9] out of size; Whilst to six feet the vigorous stripling grown, Declares that Garrick is another Coan.[10] 50  When place of judgment is by whim supplied, And our opinions have their rise in pride; When, in discoursing on each mimic elf, We praise and censure with an eye to self; All must meet friends, and Ackman[11] bids as fair, In such a court, as Garrick, for the chair.  At length agreed, all squabbles to decide, By some one judge the cause was to be tried; But this their squabbles did afresh renew, Who should be judge in such a trial:—who? 60  For Johnson some; but Johnson, it was fear'd, Would be too grave; and Sterne[12] too gay appear'd; Others for Franklin[13] voted; but 'twas known, He sicken'd at all triumphs but his own: For Colman[14] many, but the peevish tongue Of prudent Age found out that he was young: For Murphy[15] some few pilfering wits declared, Whilst Folly clapp'd her hands, and Wisdom stared.  To mischief train'd, e'en from his mother's womb, Grown old in fraud, though yet in manhood's bloom, 70 Adopting arts by which gay villains rise, And reach the heights which honest men despise; Mute at the bar, and in the senate loud, Dull 'mongst the dullest, proudest of the proud; A pert, prim, prater of the northern race,[16] Guilt in his heart, and famine in his face, Stood forth,—and thrice he waved his lily hand, And thrice he twirled his tye, thrice stroked his band:—  At Friendship's call (thus oft, with traitorous aim, Men void of faith usurp Faith's sacred name) 80 At Friendship's call I come, by Murphy sent, Who thus by me develops his intent: But lest, transfused, the spirit should be lost, That spirit which, in storms of rhetoric toss'd, Bounces about, and flies like bottled beer, In his own words his own intentions hear.  Thanks to my friends; but to vile fortunes born, No robes of fur these shoulders must adorn. Vain your applause, no aid from thence I draw; Vain all my wit, for what is wit in law? 90 Twice, (cursed remembrance!) twice I strove to gain Admittance 'mongst the law-instructed train, Who, in the Temple and Gray's Inn, prepare For clients' wretched feet the legal snare; Dead to those arts which polish and refine, Deaf to all worth, because that worth was mine,

Twice did those blockheads startle at my name, And foul rejection gave me up to shame. To laws and lawyers then I bade adieu, And plans of far more liberal note pursue. 100 Who will may be a judge—my kindling breast Burns for that chair which Roscius once possess'd. Here give your votes, your interest here exert, And let success for once attend desert.  With sleek appearance, and with ambling pace, And, type of vacant head, with vacant face, The Proteus Hill[17] put in his modest plea,— Let Favour speak for others, Worth for me.— For who, like him, his various powers could call Into so many shapes, and shine in all? 110 Who could so nobly grace the motley list, Actor, Inspector, Doctor, Botanist? Knows any one so well—sure no one knows— At once to play, prescribe, compound, compose? Who can—but Woodward[18] came,—Hill slipp'd away, Melting, like ghosts, before the rising day.  With that low cunning, which in fools[19] supplies, And amply too, the place of being wise, Which Nature, kind, indulgent parent, gave To qualify the blockhead for a knave; 120 With that smooth falsehood, whose appearance charms, And Reason of each wholesome doubt disarms, Which to the lowest depths of guile descends, By vilest means pursues the vilest ends; Wears Friendship's mask for purposes of spite, Pawns in the day, and butchers in the night; With that malignant envy which turns pale, And sickens, even if a friend prevail, Which merit and success pursues with hate, And damns the worth it cannot imitate; 130 With the cold caution of a coward's spleen, Which fears not guilt, but always seeks a screen, Which keeps this maxim ever in her view— What's basely done, should be done safely too; With that dull, rooted, callous impudence, Which, dead to shame and every nicer sense, Ne'er blush'd, unless, in spreading Vice's snares, She blunder'd on some virtue unawares; With all these blessings, which we seldom find Lavish'd by Nature on one happy mind, 140 A motley figure, of the Fribble tribe, Which heart can scarce conceive, or pen describe, Came simpering on—to ascertain whose sex Twelve sage impannell'd matrons would perplex. Nor male, nor female; neither, and yet both; Of neuter gender, though of Irish growth; A six-foot suckling, mincing in Its gait; Affected, peevish, prim, and delicate; Fearful It seem'd, though of athletic make, Lest brutal breezes should too roughly shake 150 Its tender form, and savage motion spread, O'er Its pale cheeks, the horrid manly red.  Much did It talk, in Its own pretty phrase, Of genius and of taste, of players and of plays; Much too of writings, which Itself had wrote, Of special merit, though of little note; For Fate, in a strange humour, had decreed That what It wrote, none but Itself should read; Much, too, It chatter'd of dramatic laws, Misjudging critics, and misplaced applause; 160 Then, with a self-complacent, jutting air, It smiled, It smirk'd, It wriggled to the chair; And, with an awkward briskness not Its own, Looking around, and perking on the throne, Triumphant seem'd; when that strange savage dame,

Known but to few, or only known by name, Plain Common-Sense appear'd, by Nature there Appointed, with plain Truth, to guard the chair, The pageant saw, and, blasted with her frown, To Its first state of nothing melted down. 170  Nor shall the Muse, (for even there the pride Of this vain nothing shall be mortified) Nor shall the Muse (should Fate ordain her rhymes, Fond, pleasing thought! to live in after-times) With such a trifler's name her pages blot; Known be the character, the thing forgot: Let It, to disappoint each future aim, Live without sex, and die without a name!  Cold-blooded critics, by enervate sires Scarce hammer'd out, when Nature's feeble fires 180 Glimmer'd their last; whose sluggish blood, half froze, Creeps labouring through the veins; whose heart ne'er glows With fancy-kindled heat;—a servile race, Who, in mere want of fault, all merit place; Who blind obedience pay to ancient schools, Bigots to Greece, and slaves to musty rules; With solemn consequence declared that none Could judge that cause but Sophocles alone. Dupes to their fancied excellence, the crowd, Obsequious to the sacred dictate, bow'd. 190  When, from amidst the throng, a youth stood forth,[20] Unknown his person, not unknown his worth; His look bespoke applause; alone he stood, Alone he stemm'd the mighty critic flood. He talk'd of ancients, as the man became Who prized our own, but envied not their fame; With noble reverence spoke of Greece and Rome, And scorn'd to tear the laurel from the tomb.  But, more than just to other countries grown, Must we turn base apostates to our own? 200 Where do these words of Greece and Rome excel, That England may not please the ear as well? What mighty magic's in the place or air, That all perfection needs must centre there? In states, let strangers blindly be preferr'd; In state of letters, merit should be heard. Genius is of no country; her pure ray Spreads all abroad, as general as the day; Foe to restraint, from place to place she flies, And may hereafter e'en in Holland rise. 210 May not, (to give a pleasing fancy scope, And cheer a patriot heart with patriot hope) May not some great extensive genius raise The name of Britain 'bove Athenian praise; And, whilst brave thirst of fame his bosom warms, Make England great in letters as in arms? There may—there hath,—and Shakspeare's Muse aspires Beyond the reach of Greece; with native fires Mounting aloft, he wings his daring flight, Whilst Sophocles below stands trembling at his height. 220  Why should we then abroad for judges roam, When abler judges we may find at home? Happy in tragic and in comic powers, Have we not Shakspeare?—Is not Jonson ours? For them, your natural judges, Britons, vote; They'll judge like Britons, who like Britons wrote.  He said, and conquer'd—Sense resumed her sway, And disappointed pedants stalk'd away. Shakspeare and Jonson, with deserved applause, Joint-judges were ordain'd to try the cause. 230 Meantime the stranger every voice employ'd, To ask or tell his name. Who is it? Lloyd.  Thus, when the aged friends of Job stood mute, And, tamely prudent, gave up the dispute,